To Toby himself:
Toby, phone Mospheira immediately. At this point news will be breaking on the station and it will be making its way through channels by dawn, if it has not already arrived from station operations to Mospheira.
The kyo are signaling. We recognize the signal and it is optimistic. We regard this visit as a diplomatic contact. By all signs, it is the kyo we were dealing with.
Tell Shawn all other things apply.
Urgently.
God. One more day. One more day, and they would be on the shuttle headed up there. But now that the news was getting out, public disturbance might make it difficult to get safe transport to the port.
Call Ogun at this point— or keep operating through Jase, whose immediate superior was Sabin?
He didn’t personally trust Ogun. There was too much cloudy history there—too much of the very history the Heritage Party pointed up as reasons not to trust the administrators, too many things Ogun had done high-handedly, without consultation with Sabin, since Ramirez’ death.
And perhaps because of that clouded history—Ogun’s having been a part of former senior command—in his heart of hearts he didn’t personally rule out Ogun as the origin of Tillington’s unfortunate remark.
Sabin and Ogun didn’t agree on a wealth of matters—spectacularly, they didn’t agree. Sabin had organized the mission to Reunion without Ogun’s full agreement. Sabin had hoped to prevent exactly what had happened: another species getting their location.
It was no fault of Sabin’s that the mission had given the kyo their point of origin. The other species had very likely been sitting there when they arrived, thanks to moves Ramirez had made, as he suspected, leading the kyo to Reunion in the first place, when their decoy effort failed.
But tell that to a man who had had issues with Sabin for a long, long history of a divided Council. Ogun very possibly had been in command along with Ramirez when Phoenix had intruded directly into kyo space—
No way to know that now. Only Ogun knew what Ramirez had done. The other people closest to Ramirez were dead. The surviving crew that had been on duty, with a fragmentary picture of what had happened, might have loyalties to one captain or the other—but they had no whole understanding of what had happened or what decisions had been made and why.
At a certain point, in this current situation, the hell with it. So much unhappy history should be cut loose and let go, if they could just let go the distrust and the recriminations along with it.
And if he kept talking only to Sabin—at this critical juncture—he made himself part of the pattern. He could back Sabin all the way to marginalizing Ogun—or splitting the crew.
With Ogun—rested so much information.
And with Ogun—stood a good number of the ship’s crew and the Mospheirans on station, who trusted him—for one thing, as the man who’d kept the station functioning when the coup in the aishidi’tat had cut off supply and left them suddenly on their own.
No, the man had been on the wrong side of one historical situation. But on the right side of the other. Sooner or later he had to deal with Ogun, and with Ogun in charge of communications and with the risk of the station sending some wrong signal back to the kyo—later did not seem a good idea.
He picked up the phone, began the process to get another station contact, and hoped Jase had been able to get communications cleared.
He had.
And the voice was Mospheiran. “This is Station Central.”
“This is Bren Cameron, in the name of Tabini, aiji of the aishidi’tat. Get me Captain Jules Ogun. Not his office. Captain Ogun, personally, by whatever channels it takes. As long as it takes.”
“He’s in a—”
“I understand that. Unfortunately no one he can contact down here speaks Mosphei’ if he tries to call me back. And there’s an extreme emergency in progress. Can you give me a time at which he will be out of his meeting? Your physical safety is at stake.”
“Just a moment, sir. Please wait.”
Communications up there, in whatever Central was active at the hour, was accustomed to his contacts with Geigi, and occasionally with Jase. Probably somebody had to get somebody to authorize a contact that didn’t have a precedent, and very likely Ogun had given direct orders not to be disturbed during a series of meetings of his own choosing.
Communications took far more than a moment. Bren began sorting papers on his desk, and thinking. Hard. He had to engage Ogun fast and turn the conversation to the positive. Had to. He didn’t want to start with an argument.
Click.
The man did have curiosity, from past observation. And he was a bit touchy about criticism.
“This is Ogun.”
“Bren Cameron here, Captain. I know what you’ve done and so far everything you’ve done has been absolutely correct, to the letter. I’ve been following the situation. I have information. Have you a moment?”
“Go ahead.”
“You are now receiving a signal identical to previous communications with these people. This is a good sign. This is exactly the pattern of the last contact, which ended peacefully. You should be echoing their message back exactly at their interval.”
“Appreciated.” The tone was not appreciative. “And then what do we expect, Mr. Cameron?”
Not a happy man today, no.
“Keep repeating the initial message and interval identically, sir, no matter what they send, and notify me if they change it. I’m heading up there tomorrow with the same team that handled the last interaction with the kyo. We’ll be traveling express.”
There was dead silence from Ogun’s side, no encouragement at all.
“We are bringing up linguistic records from the meeting at Reunion and we will back you, sir. Speaking for the aiji, we place human safety, including yours, on an equal priority with our own. I would also respectfully suggest, sir, that you detach Phoenix from the station now and move out very, very slowly to a convenient distance. Doing it later might send the wrong signal.”
“Captains know where and when to position the ship, Mr. Cameron.”
“Your translator, Captain, in your service, knows what may be misinterpreted as a hostile move at a later stage of these negotiations. With all due respect, please separate Phoenix from dock now, to preserve all future options. The kyo do not know how many ships we have. They do not know where they might be.”
“No thanks to your efforts at Reunion!”
“We know the kyo are definitely armed sufficiently to take out the station. I do not serve any side in this, sir, except Tabini-aiji. The aiji has every interest in assisting you, and I am personally assigned to be a resource at your disposal, sir. I am willing to support you at any hour, at any time. If that signal changes in any detail before I get there, please keep me advised before you alter your own response.”
Still a lingering silence. But the contact persisted. Then:
“How are you at taking orders, Mr. Cameron?”
“I am excellent at it, sir, and I am equally excellent at my job. I have met these people—”
“People, is it?”